Cooking tips

Jen and I both like to cook. I ran into this website that has about 30 neat tips. Some I knew already, some are cool additions...

Les Secrets de la Cuisine
One thing that I�ve learned from working with chefs throughout the years is that tasks that look on the surface to be difficult often are not. When teaching a trick to students, I repeatedly witness the same �ah hah� reaction that I�m sure I exhibited when I first saw a chef do this same thing. It�s the reaction you have to something that seems difficult but turns out to be easy. It�s the reaction you have when you discover how something is done. Over time I started to think a lot of these �tricks of the trade� as being reminiscent of a fraternal organization�s secret handshake, the greeting that only members know. But there never has been anything secret about them, and I never had to join up to learn them.

Here is one (excerpted):

Restaurants have a marvelous machine for rolling dough into thin, even sheets. It resembles a wringer that looks similar to one that used to be found next to a washing machine 50 years ago. ... In kitchens without one of these machines, there�s a simple method that can be used to achieve consistent results. A pair of �rails� can easily be constructed for the rolling pin to rest on as it is moved to and fro. The rails limit the thickness (thinness?) to which the dough can be rolled. At Restaurant Patrick Jeffroy in Carantec, France, they use 3-cm wide strips of tag board cut from an old calendar. Each strip is about a millimeter thick and they stack the strips to achieve different heights.